Effective camouflage and stealth systems may be critical to the success of military operations, allowing for the covert deployment of personnel, vehicles, equipment, and cargo into the field. Conventional passive optical camouflage (i.e. camouflage in the visible spectrum) consists of placing onto an asset one or more surface color and/or texture schemes selected to match an anticipated operating environment. These schemes may include patterns to match, for example, sky, desert, forest, oceanic, urban settings or other non-specific digital schemes. However, in the field, each environment or theater of operation requires a unique scheme, which may include a pattern that changes over time. Moreover, within these environments, unpredictable variations in the actual background limit the effectiveness of these static scheme camouflage systems.
In order to remedy these shortcomings, existing active camouflage systems utilize image-capturing and display equipment to recreate a captured background image onto a selected surface of an asset, thereby providing a camouflage effect. However, these systems, in addition to being complex and bulky, provide only single-spectrum protection (i.e. optical camouflage), while modern detection equipment may utilize infrared (IR) and radio-frequency (RF) band EM energy to detect potential targets. Alternative systems and methods are desired.